Juanjuan Cheng

This paper advances and defends an inclusive functionalist conception of perception, according to which any cognitive process that performs information selection, representation —understood in a functional sense as an internal state that carries information about the world and guides behavior and cognition independently of its phenomenal properties—and behavioral guidance qualifies as perceptual, whether or not it is accompanied by conscious experience (specifically phenomenal consciousness, the subjective “what-it’s-like” aspect), contra Phillips’s consciousness-centric view. By defining perception in functional rather than phenomenal terms, the paper argues for the existence of both conscious and unconscious forms of perception, and clarifies how perceptual mechanisms operate across different levels of consciousness. To support this view, I integrate philosophical analysis with empirical findings from neuroscience and psychology, drawing on classic paradigms in neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) research, such as perceptual competition (e.g., binocular rivalry), threshold stimulation (e.g., visual masking), and residual visual processing (e.g., blindsight)—which collectively demonstrate that perceptual processing extends beyond phenomenal limits. Building on this interdisciplinary analysis, I respond to Phillips’s critiques of unconscious perception in three respects: (1) his definition excludes empirically supported instances of unconscious perceptual processing; (2) it presupposes a rigid conceptual link between perception and consciousness, ignoring their graded and context-dependent relation; and (3) it constrains empirical interpretation in ways that narrow the theoretical reach of perception research. Taken together, these arguments support a functionally grounded and inclusive framework of perception that bridges philosophy and cognitive science, showing that conscious and unconscious perception are continuous manifestations of a shared perceptual architecture.

The Language of Thought Hypothesis (LOTH) posits that mental states operate through a language-like representational system physically implemented in the brain. However, this purely symbolic approach faces a significant limitation: certain mental phenomena—such as intuitions, emotions, and intentions—lack the syntactically compositional structure required by LOTH and therefore cannot be adequately explained within its symbolic framework. To address this theoretical challenge, we turn to Theravāda Buddhism (TB), an early Buddhist tradition that integrates rigorous philosophical inquiry with meditative practice. Remarkably, TB began to prefigure a solution to LOTH’s limitations over 2,300 years ago. Although LOTH and TB differ in implementation—LOTH through combinatorial syntax and semantics, and TB through meditative practice—they both share a foundational syntactic view of the mind. This distinction opens a pathway to enrich and extend LOTH’s explanatory scope. This paper proposes that TB’s recursive, structured experiential models offer a layered and dynamic foundation for symbolic processes, thereby addressing LOTH’s symbol grounding problem—an infinite regress in which no symbol is intrinsically meaningful, without abandoning formal structure. In doing so, it reframes the apparent tension between LOTH and TB as a syntactic enrichment, wherein structured cognitive architectures accommodate both symbolic representations and experience-grounded processes. Through this enrichment, TB’s meditative approach to cognitive processes lacking syntactic compositionality prefigures a resolution to LOTH’s limitations while preserving its core insights into mental representation.